


Burning Heart

by Ryumaru



Category: Dust: An Elysian Tail
Genre: Anger Management, Drabble, Game Spoilers, Gen, Identity Issues, Rage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 05:26:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4816742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryumaru/pseuds/Ryumaru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dust feels it, deep inside - it's a fire that threatens to consume him if he doesn't keep it down. In battle, there are two voices driving him onwards. One makes him afraid, and the other would see him burn along with the rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Heart

The Moonbloods call him Mithrarin. Ginger wants to call him Jin. His new enemy once knew him as Cassius. But all he is, all he wants to be, is Dust. 

Battle is easy. The Blade of Ahrah is no toy, but it flickers through the air, weaving glittering patterns of blood and steel, as easily as one. Whether it is the sword-arm of Cassius or the Blade's own skills, Dust isn't sure. He's never been sure. But he does know that there is more than practice driving it. Deep down, there is the inescapable burn of inexplicable fury. 

It doesn't come from Jin. It can't. Jin was too kind, too gentle. Cassius was cold and calculating, not a berserker. And the Blade, while it is powerful, speaks out loud and not into his mind. Dust's fury is his own, then. It must be. Or perhaps it is born of all three - Jin's outrage and lust for vengeance, Cassius' indignation at being beaten, and Dust's for... for existing. 

Such a thing as he cannot be natural. A body, his body, formed of what? Souls cannot create skin and bone. The Moonbloods must have woven his flesh from mud, or forced the lingering spirits back into the Royal Assassin's cold corpse. Perhaps this is where the fires in the pits of his mind come from. The base part of him rebels against his freakish, revenant nature, if it truly be such. 

It was easy to tear through the walking corpses in the Sorrowing Meadows. Easier than fighting imps and giants, even. Dust cannot be sure. Perhaps it was a relief to fight such abominations; a psychic release for his own deeply buried self-hatred. 

Now, in the Everdawn Basin, his foes are not corpses but living soldiers, soon to be struck down. Gaius' forces attack him, nigh endlessly, but even the elite assassins, with their ability to hide from sight, have not a hope. The heat of the volcano drowns out the heat of the blood that splashes onto him. Bodies tumble into the lava, burning before they touch the molten rock. Fidget's lightning sprays across the mesas of safe ground, shorting out whatever keeps his assailants cloaked. She cannot know what drives him; she would flee from him, taking what little keeps him bound together with her. 

Has he avenged the slaughter of the Moonbloods? Not until Gaius has fallen. Perhaps then, the fury will be quelled, quenched in his lifeblood. But Dust knows that this is not the case. He hopes, but knows otherwise. 

Even as he strikes down foe after foe, he keeps silent. He doesn't trust his voice. When there are none left, he forces himself not to speak for a while, remaining mute until he feels that he can speak without betraying the lingering berserker fury that has wrapped its thorny vines around his heart. It is painful, so painful, and yet that has carried him from battlefield to battlefield. 

When it started, in that first battle against the giants attacking two old farmers, it was just a small flame - no more than a candle. Over time, it grew, becoming a brilliant bonfire that threatened to take over his mind and drive him to mindless slaughter. Would that have been so different from where he is, from _what_ he is now? He can feel his teeth crack as he grits them, biting down to keep the unnatural heat from bursting forth and becoming a wildfire. He cannot let it consume him. 

When it is over, all he wants to be is Dust. Ashes to ashes, and all that.

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I'm spitting out to deal with some leftover feelings, honestly. Mostly personal. But I thought that it would be better to try and do something productive and creative rather than take it out on something else. So here; some personal thoughts on what it's like to have two souls, neither of which really belong to you.


End file.
